Saddam tape urges Iraqis to rise up

AN Australian newspaper yesterday claimed to have a tape of Saddam Hussein, recorded just days ago, urging Iraqis to rise up against the coalition forces occupying their country.

A tired-sounding voice calls on Iraq's people to stand together in an underground war against the occupying forces.

"Through this secret means I am talking to you from inside great Iraq and I say to you, the main task for you, Arab and Kurd, Shiite and Sunni, Muslim and Christian and the whole Iraqi people of all religions, your main task is to kick the enemy out from our country," the speaker said.

"I don't want to talk in details about the occupation I am going to focus instead on how to face these invaders and kick them out ," it says, pausing to cough. "We have to go back to the secret style of struggle that we began our life with."

The Sydney Morning Herald said the audio tape was passed to their reporter by unidentified Iraqis outside Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, after they had failed to find correspondents from the Gulf satellite TV news station Al-Jazeera.

Al-Jazeera has been the conduit for earlier tapes from Saddam, whose last alleged sighting was in Baghdad on April 18.

When the reporter's translator pointed to the hotel and the security cordon manned by coalition forces, one of the men handed the tape over to the translator, saying it was his duty as an Iraqi to ensure the tape was made public.

The translator said the men spoke with the distinctive accents of the Tikrit region, where Saddam is from.

The paper played the tape to more than a dozen Iraqis, including a judge, a law professor and a former Saddam associate, all of whom said it sounded authentic.

The tape has also been passed US authorities.

The voice on the tape calls on the people to reject new Iraqi leaders who are "working with the foreigners" and to rise against the occupying powers, by not "buying anything from them, or by shooting them with your rifles and trying to destroy their cannons and tanks".

The tape refers several times to the post-Baath occupation, accusing US forces of looting the Iraqi National Museum.

It also refers to the Iraqi people celebrating Saddam's birthday possibly a reference to claims that a crowd of demonstrators fired on by US soldiers in Falluja, killing 15, were celebrating the occasion.

The voice speaks of previous attempts to communicate with the Iraqi people.

"I addressed some messages before, many messages before," it says.

"Some of them were by my voice and some were addressed to the mass media, but we know and you know very well the mass media in the world is controlled by Zionists, and especially by their headquarters in the White House."

Last week, the London based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper said it received a statement from Saddam urging Iraqis to "rise up" against occupation.

To reporters familiar with other documents attributed to Saddam, neither the handwriting nor the signature appeared similar, but the newspaper said sources close to Saddam confirmed both were genuine.

Saddam's fate is not known. He was targeted by cruise missiles on March 20, in the opening salvo of the war. As US troops converged on Baghdad, American jets dropped bombs on the al-Mansour neighbourhood on April 7, after Saddam was reportedly seen there.

Some Iraqis claimed to have seen him in the Azamiyah district two days later, in an appearance that was taped and broadcast by Abu Dhabi television.

But US officials dispute the authenticity of the footage.